


Breathe Me In

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Ariadne-centric, F/F, Sexual Fantasy, ariadne fantasises about mal, ariadne taking control, arthur looking out for ariadne, eames and arthur are good friends, eames looking out for ariadne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 13:09:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6611815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne can't get Mal out of her head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe Me In

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2010.

There's a faint throbbing _want_ between Ariadne's legs and she knows it's wrong, impossibly, terribly wrong. Far more wrong than going inside people's minds and extracting their secrets. But she does it anyway, her fingers sliding down her stomach, barely teasing herself, before she dips them inside herself, smears the wetness on the tips of her fingers, and starts circling her fingers on her clit. She knows it won't take long. She'd been thinking about this all day – all through her lectures, her dinner with Arthur and Eames (the former in town for a meeting, the latter on a supposed vacation). Thinking about touching herself, about someone else's fingers pushing into her, someone else's tongue, someone else's lips around her nipples, pressing kisses along her neck....

She came with a shudder, her head falling back onto her bad, her heartbeat racing out of control. She looked over at the picture on her dresser and sighed. She wished she had a better one, something more to study, but she'd taken a risk in swiping this one from Cobb's house the last time she visited. She certainly couldn't ask him for one. And there really was no easy well to tell someone she'd been fantasising about their dead wife ever since she'd met her.

With a long sigh she hauled herself up and padded to her bathroom, intent on having an extremely long, extremely cold, shower.

* * * * * *

Ariadne's really starting to believe she's losing her mind. She builds well enough and she's certainly not had any complaints from the team's she's worked with – strangers mostly though Arthur always asks for her when he's in Europe and Eames has recommended her to some very interesting people. (Their older brother routine is far too endearing for her to ever stop them, even when the “have you got yourself a boyfriend yet?” question inevitably slips out).

But that's not the problem. Her architecture, the buzz of pure creation, is never a problem. No matter how tired or stressed she may be, she can always spin whole worlds out of nothing. No, the problem is that Mal has started appearing in her dreams.

The first time it happened she was in a proper dream, one that made little sense when she woke up except for flashes of images, but which was blissfully PASIV free.

The second time it was clearer, and Mal's tongue licking its way inside her is what sent her hurtling off the bed, her sweat soaked sheets tangled around her legs, her body eagerly demanding attention from the vibrator she kept in the top drawer of her dresser (she happily obliged and then felt slightly sick about the whole thing).

The third time it happened she was on a job. She wasn't even supposed to be there but their mark was a lot more difficult than they'd been led to believe and Ariadne had something of a reputation for outside the box thinking by now, and had agreed to lend a hand. What she hadn't expected was for Mal to show up – beautiful, impossible, Mal, looking just as she had the last time Ariadne had seen her projection – and press her against the wall, claiming her lips in a kiss that made Ariadne's toes curl.

She'd wanted to push her away or tell her to stop, but nothing happened. And then one of the mark's projections had shot her in the chest and that was the end of that.

Only it wasn't. Mal kept showing up, sometimes in her real dreams, but now more often when she was at work and could least afford the distraction. Sometimes she'd keep her distance but Ariadne’s impression of the late Mrs Cobb was that keeping her distance wasn't something she did easily and it was surely her impression of her that was at work here. Was she keeping the projection at bay or calling Mal to her? Ariadne didn't know and she had no one to ask. Cobb was obviously out. And while she would have loved to have confided in Arthur she didn't want him to be disappointed in her, and somehow she felt he would be if he knew she'd conjured Mal's ghost back from the dead.

Finally, she settled on Eames.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.

She and Eames were sitting at a quiet bar next to the Seine, sipping at their glasses of wine. Eames raised an eyebrow.

“Your wish is my command, my dear. What do you want to know?”

Ariadne smiled shyly at him. “It's about projections...” She paused and he looked at her expectantly. “Have you ever...” _Had sex with one, fantasied about one, created one that belonged to someone else._ “Have you ever had one do anything unexpected?”

Eames snorted. “Of course. Though when you think about it later, it's usually not that unexpected. They're from your subconscious after all.”

“So if I wanted to...get rid of one...”

Eames straightened up then. A more serious expression flittered across his face before it was gone, replaced by a bland smile. Ariadne wasn't sure if she was getting better at reading the forger or if he was just deliberately telegraphing his moves.

“This isn’t a hypothetical conversation, is it? Are you in trouble?”

“No, no, really,” Ariadne said. She waved her hand in a brief dismissal, though she was aware that Eames didn't look fooled. “I just have to work out what the projection wants right?”

“No,” Eames said, shaking his head fondly. “You just have to work out what you want.”

* * * * *

Ariadne hooked herself up to the PASIV device three days after her conversation with Eames. It had taken her that long to gather her courage together. Plus, she was hesitant about going under on her own – she'd never done that before.

With one last look at the photograph on her dresser she inserted the IV and drifted off to sleep.

* * * * *

She was somewhere in Rome, a city she'd never been to but which had always fascinated her. The heat was just about bearable. She looked down at herself and found she was wearing a long white dress that she'd never contemplate wearing in the real world. She frowned and wondered just what her subconscious had in mind.

“What's it like?” Mal asked and Ariadne startled. She hadn't seen the projection approaching.

“What's what like?” Ariadne asked. She let Mal lead her to an apartment block and followed her up the creaking metal stairs.

“Being a lover?” Mal asked, with a small upturn of her mouth. “That's what you wanted isn't it? To know what that's like. I'm your missing half,” she whispered up against Ariadne’s cheek before pulling her into a kiss.

Ariadne moaned and put her arms around Mal's neck. However high this was on the scale of really bad ideas, right now she didn’t care. Mal tasted fantastic and her body as it pressed Ariadne up against the wall, was just as she had imagined it...

With that thought she blinked and pushed Mal away. “Wait, wait a minute...”

“This is what you want, Ariadne, I could sense it in you the moment we met.” Mal stepped forward and traced a finger down Ariadne's cheek and then neck before pulling at the buttons on the front of Ariadne's dress, exposing her breasts. “You want to lose yourself in me.” Mal knelt down and took one of Ariadne’s nipples in her mouth. Ariadne keened and then tried to take a step back. Mal's firm grip on her hips stopped her. “You want to stay here with me, be loved by me, know what it is to be half of a whole.”

“I – yes – but not, I don't want to _stay_ here,” Ariadne whispered. But it was tempting. So very tempting, with Mal's cool fingers suddenly everywhere. Ariadne wanted what Cobb and Mal had, the kind of love that could transcend everything, the kind of sex that could easily fill that ache inside of her she'd barely acknowledged before Mal had judged her and found her wanting.

But she was stronger than that. She always had been.

“I'm sorry, Mal. I can't see you anymore.”

Mal's eyes turned furious and Ariadne took a deep breath before imagining a gun in her hand and shooting Mal in the middle of her forehead. Then she turned the gun on herself.

* * * * *

When she blinked awake she wasn't surprised to see Eames and Arthur sitting on the edge of the bed. Nor did she miss the picture in Arthur's hand.

“Is everything all right?” Eames asked her. She nodded as she pulled the IV out of her arm.

“Yes. I'm fine.” She reached out for the photo in Arthur's hand and he handed it over, his lips pursed into a thin line. Deciding to ignore that for the moment she put the photo in the metal trashcan and then used a match to set it alight.

All three of them watched in silence as it burned.

“I have a job for you,” Arthur said after a moment, “if you’re up for it?”

Ariadne turned towards him and he gifted her with one of his rare smiles. Slowly she returned it. She'd just have to accept that sharing dreams with people meant no longer keeping secrets. And as Eames began to tell her about their newest mark and Arthur corrected all the facts he was (deliberately) getting wrong, she decided that maybe that wasn't such a bad compromise. Not if it gave her moments like these, where no secrets also meant no judgement. Not a bad compromise at all.


End file.
